Thursday, February 02, 2006

turned garden

mike turned the garden with the tractor. we went out and pulled all the visible roots and rocks. yes, we started a new rock ring. the other three are now filled to the brim. i used some of that old fence that we removed from between us and the squatter lot to make it. i call it the squatter lot for two reasons 1. we have use of it until further notice 2. the adjoining lot on the other side is being squatted on also.

the garden will be 35 by 70 feet. it seems huge from my perspective but we plan to become completely dependant on it for all our vegetables. is that big enough? tabitha says that it isn't the size of the garden but how much of the booty you manage to put up. we have a huge freezer. we plan to can everything. we have two excellently large pressure canners. the biggie will be to make a root cellar. i hope to get our neighbor to dig the area with his backhoe. i plan cement block walls with a gravel floor. the roof will be ferrocement, roofing felt, and a layer of meshcrete then piles of dirt. we plan to keep all of our canned goods in there along with the stored vegetables. it will have to be fairly large to accommodate our plans.

today we plan to visit the piglets and the farmstead that tabitha visited last week. maybe i'll try to haul some of the big cedar posts up from the lower cedar grove. if only nimue were trained as an oxen. nimue is such a sweet cow the other night she was laying down in the field and i walked out and laid down with her, cozyed right in. she'll let ya lay right on top of her. she smells so good. my only experience with cows is that they are dirty and stinky. she is very clean and actually smells good kinda like a cross between sweet grain and milk. weird uh?

pigs are another story, they stink and will be fairly far away. addressing their new home is also on my short list agenda. we'll need to get a solar panel, battery and electric fence charger along with electric fence wire. i plan to surround the pond and adjoining flat area with the pen. shelter will be just a simple lean-to.

1 comment:

That is very sweet of Nimue to let you lay with her. Are cows pack animals? Everytime we drive by a pig farm, I complain of the smell but my husband said it doesn't have to be that way. If pigs are given enough room then they don't tend to smell as bad. He said the only reason the pig farms we've seen smell bad is because the pigs are forced to be in confined spaces and they wallow in their own filth. If the pigs had a choice to wallow in clean mud they would choose that over their feces. Just an encouragement that yours may not smell as bad as you think.